The Village Foot-Idiot

He was the village foot-idiot – collectively purchased by the villagers (all 350 of them) to serve the feet and footwear of the female villagers.

He was a good buy – going cheap, and equally inexpensive to maintain. The villagers didn’t bother to supply him with any accommodation as such; they just tethered him every night to the maypole in the centre of the village green, the same maypole the village maidens danced around barefoot (again whilst he was tethered to it) every May Day. And they had no need to feed him as such – he survived on scraps of discarded food that he found lying around the village streets.

Or rather the village street – for it was pretty much a one-street village. It was, in fact, a ‘one-everything’ village; one pub; one church; one hall; one shop; one bus-stop; one village green; one maypole; one set of stocks; one whip; and one village foot-idiot.

He was untethered at 05:30 every morning by the milk-delivery lady from the nearby dairy (a major source of employment for many of the villagers). The milk-delivery lady, mistress Annabelle, did not live in the village herself. She was from the nearby town, but as she tended to be the first female who was up and about in the village every morning, she had the honour of untethering the village foot-idiot and putting him to work.

Mistress Annabelle often had to awaken the village foot-idiot with a sharp kick from her round-toed, block-heeled, zip-up, brown leather ankle boot, as the village foot-idiot was notoriously lazy. He should have made sure he was awake every morning by 05:30, as he had lots of work to do every day, but, perhaps because he was often not ‘put to bed’ (i.e. re-tethered to the maypole) until after midnight, he never seemed to be able to get enough sleep.

But mistress Annabelle, a natural early-riser, had no sympathy for the dirty, stop-out, village foot-idiot. As far as she was concerned if she could be up and about going about her business of delivering milk to the doorsteps of the villagers by 05:30 a.m. on this cold, crisp, dewy autumn morning, the village foot-idiot should be damn well going about his business of licking clean the village pavements by the same time.

Mistress Annabelle, of course, insisted that the village foot-idiot first kiss her ankle-booted feet before she untethered him – what self-respecting milkmaid wouldn’t! But she rarely spoke more than a few derisory words to him as she then, literally, kicked him to the curb - those words being:

‘Lick the filth off your mistresses’ pavements, foot-fool!’

It was his first proper task of the day – cleaning the pavements all along the village street with his footslave-tongue; in particular, any traces of mud and dirt left by the soles of the female villagers’ shoes or boots.

Over the years he had become quite adept at being able to distinguish traces of ladies’ shoe dirt from other, more general, street-dirt. It was the pattern of the dirt on the pavement that gave it away – the pattern of a female, dirty shoe or boot tread, quite distinct in size from that of a male shoe or boot. The village foot-idiot could even determine the distinctive shapes of the shoe-sole dirt of some of the individual mistresses in the village, so intimately did he know the pattern of the treads on their pretty shoe and boot soles. So he often knew which mistress’s residual shoe dirt he was ingesting early in the morning as she continued to sleep in the comfort of her bed, tucked up warmly beside her husband.

Once he was properly awake, if truth be told, he quite liked his early-morning footpath-licking duties. It gave him the simultaneous opportunity to forage for scraps of food – a dirty, discarded bread crust here; a partially-chewed chocolate there. Although, of course, he was competing with the birds, the rodents and other hungry predators for the scraps of food thrown nonchalantly away by the messy villagers (they were messy because they knew they had a public footslave who was obliged to clean up their pavements after them).

Even better than that, however, outside nearly every doorway in the village was at least one pair of feminine shoes or boots – left outside on the doormat overnight by the lady of the house for the village foot-idiot to lick clean. There was no crime in the village, and absolutely no danger of the shoes or boots being stolen (fortunately for the village foot-idiot, for he doubled up as the village whipping-boy, and would most assuredly be punished in lieu of any shoe-thief in the village should such an unimaginable crime ever be committed!)

The village foot-idiot, being a fool, loved the taste and smell of ladies’ dirty shoes and boots – particularly the stale, sweaty smell of the inner linings of a pair of well-worn female shoes or boots. And so, whilst the lady’s boyfriend or husband would be tucked up beside her in bed breathing in the lovely, perfumed fragrance of his woman’s soft, feminine body, the village foot-idiot would be kneeling in the cold outside their front porch inhaling the beautiful, young woman’s stale boot or shoe-sweat prior to tongue-shining the item of footwear in question until it shimmered in the early morning, autumnal sunshine.

Some of the female villagers even left their dirty socks or tights out for him to clean – usually tucked into the tops of their shoes or boots, and so he got to taste the very essence of his female betters’ stale footsweat as he sucked greedily on the reinforced toe-ends of their unwashed, thick, woolly bootsocks or sheer, dark nylons.

Dirt, stink and sweat – that was his early morning experience; every morning; 365 days a year; whatever the weather; in sickness and in health.

Milkmaid-mistress Annabelle had long since finished her brief milk-round in the village, and driven off to the next village down the road, by the time the village foot-idiot encountered his second, real-life mistress of the day – mistress Tiffany.

He heard her footsteps approaching just as he was licking up some particularly muddy, female trainer-dirt from the middle of the pavement, and recognised that it was mistress Tiffany who was walking down the pavement towards him not just from her distinctive, confident gait, but also from the style of her shoes and socks.

The village foot-idiot recognised nearly all his female superiors in the village from their shoes and socks – for he was not permitted to look them in the eye or in their pretty faces. He was required to live his life on his hands and knees – so that he could be forever close to their boot and shoe dirt and smells.

He did know, however, that mistress Tiffany was a young black woman – for during the summer months she often wore short skirts on bare legs and open-toed, strappy, high-heeled sandals on her shapely, black, tattooed ankles. Even today, on this crisp autumn morning, she was wearing heels – shiny, black, high-heeled pumps over plain, white ankle socks beneath a pair of black, denim jeans.

He knew those shiny, black pumps and plain, white ankle socks very well. He had had occasion to kiss them many times before – for mistress Tiffany nearly always stopped to have her shoes or boots kissed by the village foot-idiot on her way to the village bus-stop every working morning.

The village foot-idiot, true to his name, was a bit dim, however, and apart from the fact that mistress Tiffany was a pretty, black girl in her early twenties; that she caught the bus into town every weekday morning where she worked as some sort of solicitor’s clerk; and that she had a fondness for high-heels, he knew nothing much else about her.

Except, that is, that she could be a most demanding young woman.

He respectfully stopped licking the trainer-mud of the pavement as mistress Tiffany stopped in front of him:

‘Ha! Ha! Is you enjoying your breakfast of girl’s trainer-dirt, idiot?’ she asked him, making polite early-morning conversation.

‘Yes, mistress Tiffany. Thank you, mistress Tiffany. If it pleases you mistress Tiffany,’ responded the slave to the superior, Afro-Caribbean mistress, even more politely.

‘Ha! Ha! I reckon that’s my friend Clare’s trainer-muck! I’m sure I saw her out jogging across the green yesterday evening! What do you think, slave? Does that patch of mud taste like my friend Clare’s trainer-mud? I mean, you should know – you must have licked her dirty trainer-soles often enough, innit?’

Mistress Tiffany was a very astute young woman and spoke the truth. The village foot-idiot had indeed tongue-cleaned the thick treads on the beige, rubbery soles of blonde, 22 year-old, village postmistress Clare’s pink and white trainers on many occasions, and he had to admit that the pattern of treads in the muddy patch might indeed be a match for those on the soles of miss Clare’s trainers.

However, there remained some lingering doubts in his pea-sized, footslave brain, as he had already passed mistress Clare’s house on his pavement and shoe-licking rounds that morning, and she had not left out any muddy trainers for him to lick clean – just a pair of soft, black leather ballet flats. Surely if her trainers had been muddy from her evening jog she would have left those out also for him to lick clean, rather than trailing the village mud onto her nice, clean carpet?

The village foot-idiot therefore found himself in a bit of a quandary. Mistress Tiffany’s perfectly legitimate question would have been much easier to answer if mistress Clare had left her dirty trainers out for him to clean, as he would then have been able to compare the taste of the mud on the pavement with that still stuck to the soles of her shoes!

He therefore hesitated for a few brief seconds in answering mistress Tiffany’s question, and, as the saying goes, ‘the slave who hesitates is punished’. Mistress Tiffany suddenly kicked him in his gormless face with the sharply-pointed toe of her stylish, black patent leather, stiletto-heeled shoe:

‘Answer me, footlick! Answer my question this instant, or by God I’ll put you in the stocks!’

The village foot-idiot dreaded being put in the village stocks – mainly because it prevented him from foraging throughout the day for food like a stray dog. He still got to lick female shoes and boots, of course, for the mistresses of the village would be kind enough to approach him whilst he was kneeling in the stocks and mock and torment him with their pretty feet and footwear, but they would never feed him.

Therefore, in his tiny mind, the stocks = starvation, and were to be avoided at all costs. This threat, and the painful kick to his face from her pointy, black leather shoe, prompted him into a waffly, slavish response:

‘Oh pray, mistress Tiffany, please forgive me mistress Tiffany – this slave is not sure whether the muck he is in the process of consuming from the pavement is indeed the muck from the soles of superior mistress Clare’s trainers or not, if you will forgive him his ignorance, mistress Tiffany, as he has not had the privilege recently of licking the rubber soles of mistress Clare’s trainers, and therefore is unable to compare the consistency of the mud in his slave mouth with that on superior mistress Clare’s training shoes, if it so pleases you most gracious and beautiful mistress Tiffany.’

Mistress Tiffany clicked her teeth in annoyance and kicked the village foot-idiot again in the face with her pointy-toed, right stiletto:

‘Ignorant fool! What kind of a foot-idiot are you? I mean, what else has you got to do all day but lick and taste your female superiors’ shoe-mud? 'Aint you paying any attention to what you’re doing? Isn’t our shoe-dirt good enough for you, or something? Or is you just too high and mighty to bother yourself with trying to identify the different tastes of your mistresses’ shoe mud?’

The village foot-idiot was suitably ashamed of himself, and embarrassed. Yet again, the bright, young Afro-Caribbean mistress, mistress Tiffany, was speaking the incontrovertible truth – that he really had nothing better to do all day long but taste women’s shoe and boot dirt, and he should know by now how to accurately identify the individual dirt from individual mistresses’ dirty shoes and boots.

He could only apologise to mistress Tiffany for his stupidity and ineptitude:

‘Oh pray, mistress Tiffany, please forgive this stupid idiot, mistress Tiffany. This slave is worth less than the dirt beneath his mistresses’ feet, and acknowledges that his mistresses’ shoe-dirt is a superior life form to him. This dirty slave is therefore unable to understand the complexities and intricacies of his superior mistresses’ shoe and boot dirt, as his slave mind and tongue are unworthy of such dirt.’

Mistress Tiffany just laughed at the village foot-idiot’s statement of the blindingly obvious:

‘Ha! Ha! What a dork! What a lamebrain!’ and with that she shoved forward her pretty, pointy right shoe onto the dirty pavement directly beneath his kneeling face:

‘Kiss the top of my sock, lamebrain!’

The village foot-idiot may not have had the intellectual capability to answer a mistress’s tricky questions, but he was good at obeying straightforward orders. He immediately lowered his muddy lips to the top of mistress Tiffany’s pure, white sock inside her shiny, black stiletto, and kissed the soft, cotton material.

The moment he removed his lips from the sock, however, he knew he was in big trouble.

Mistress Tiffany let out a gasp of disbelief – utter disbelief at what she was seeing. And the unfortunate village foot-idiot saw it too – a muddy stain, caused by his muddy lips, now soiled the top of black mistress Tiffany’s crisp, white sock! If the mud he had been licking off the pavement was indeed the mud from the soles of her friend Clare’s dirty trainers, he had just inadvertently transferred it onto the top of mistress Tiffany’s pure, white sock!

Mistress Tiffany was temporarily too shocked at his ineptitude even to kick him:

‘Just look what you’ve done, foot-moron! You’ve only gone and dirtied my sock with your dirty lips, innit?...My God, I can’t believe your stupidity!...Didn’t they teach you anything at footslave-training school? Didn’t they teach you to always lick your lips clean before kissing a lady’s sock?!’

The village foot-idiot was so thick that he actually made the situation even worse by now feverishly kissing both mistress Tiffany’s socks as he pleaded for her sweet, feminine forgiveness and mercy:

‘Oh pray, mistress Tiffany,’…kiss…kiss…'please forgive this stupid, dirty slave…’…kiss…kiss…'for soiling your pure, white, feminine sock…’…kiss…kiss…'with his dirty, slave lips…’…kiss…kiss…'if it so pleases you, sweet and kind mistress Tiffany!’…kiss…kiss.

As a result of his penitent sock-kissing, both mistress Tiffany’s white socks were now covered in faint traces of mud. Ha! Ha! You’ve got to laugh!

Although mistress Tiffany wasn’t laughing.

She angrily pushed the slave’s face away from her superior feet with the dirty sole of her pointy, right stiletto-shoe:

‘Stop blubbering over my shoes and socks, imbecile! Can’t you see you’re just making it worse?! Look!...Look at the state of my nice, white socks – clean on me this morning, and now covered in dirt from your ugly mouth! You’re nothing but a muck-spreader – a dirty muck-spreader! How dare you! I’m now going to have to go back and change my socks! Imbecile! Moron! I’ll probably miss my bus and be late for work because of you! Tch! What a moron!’

She now had the presence of mind to kick him, and also bent down to slap him hard across both cheeks.

The village foot-idiot just sobbed as his cheeks reddened with both shame and stinging pain. He knew this could only mean one thing – the stocks! A whole day confined in the village stocks!

And sure enough mistress Tiffany ordered him to crawl after her black, stiletto heels as she marched towards the low-set, heavy wooden stocks situated close to the centre of the village green, cursing him with every breath as she heard her bus arrive and depart from the bus-stop situated on the other side of the village green.

He watched the mud-stained cotton in the tops of mistress Tiffany’s white ankle socks crease and fold beneath the hems of her black, denim jeans as he knelt on the grass whilst she manipulated the heavy, wooden crossbar of the stocks down onto the top of his outstretched neck and arms, securing him tightly in the humiliating wooden contraption.

There would be no food or sustenance for him today – other than the mud he would be licking directly from the shoes and boots of those female villagers who deigned to stop by the stocks and torment him throughout the day.

Needless to say, mistress Tiffany did not invite the village foot-idiot to kiss her socks again before she rushed off to change into a clean pair of socks. But, as she now had an hour to kill before the next bus into town, she returned some thirty minutes later with the pair of white socks that the slave’s mouth had sullied, and attached them to his ears. She pretended that she was ‘bandaging’ his slap-reddened cheeks with her dirty socks as an act of kindness, but actually her motivation was to humiliate him with her dirtied socks so that all may see his shame.

For the avoidance of any doubt she then pinned a makeshift cardboard sign to the base of the wooden stocks, on which she had hastily handwritten an explanation of the reason for the slave’s confinement:

‘For smearing mud on mistress Tiffany’s white socks with his dirty, slave lips – 18 hours in the village stocks!’

Mistress Tiffany took great pleasure in reading out the slave’s crime and punishment to him, before she once again presented her right foot for the idiot to kiss. The village foot-idiot noticed that she was now wearing a pair of brown and black stripy socks, presumably because such a pair of dark-coloured socks would not show up any remaining dirt from his lips as he now, once again, kissed the young, black woman’s socked feet inside her shiny, black, pointy-toed and stiletto-heeled shoes.

Once he had kissed each arrogantly outstretched foot some 20 times, mistress Tiffany headed for the nearby bus-stop to catch the next bus into town, leaving him with the following words ringing in his ridiculous looking dirty-white-sock-decorated ears:

‘I hope it rains hard on you today, foot-idiot, and that it washes your dirty face and mouth, as well as my white socks – for if they aren’t clean by the time I get back, I’ll be stuffing them inside your mouth for a good soaking!’

And with that she clicked her teeth again, and was off leaving him with the taste of her black and brown stripy socks on his lips and the feel of her dirty, white socks dangling by the side of his face.

He looked ridiculous – kneeling with his head peering at the dirty grass beneath him through his ‘wooden window’, and with a young black woman’s dirty white ankle socks attached to his ears.

It didn’t take long for another mistress to approach the laughing stock in the middle of the village green.

Again, the village foot-idiot recognised her from her feet and footwear – it was the familiar, smart, black, boot-cut trousers; blocky, black, wedge-heeled, slip-on shoes; and plain, black ankle-length socks of mistress Wei-Yan, a Chinese girl who was lodging in the village whilst she studied pharmacy at the nearby university.

Miss Wei-Yan was laughing out loud at the village foot-idiot even before she had reached him across the green:

‘Ha! Ha! You stuck in stocks with young woman dirty ankle socks hanging from side of face! Ha! Ha! Why you here? Who put you here, slave?’

Mistress Wei-Yan clearly had not noticed, or could not be bothered to read, the cardboard sign pinned to the base of the stocks beneath the slave’s face. The village foot-idiot therefore had to verbally explain his shame and misdemeanour to the superior Chinese mistress:

‘Oh pray, mistress Wei-Yan, if it pleases you, mistress Wei-Yan, this dirty slave inadvertently dirtied his mistress Tiffany’s clean, white socks with his dirty slave lips, if it so pleases you, mistress Wei-Yan.’

Mistress Wei-Yan, it seemed, was not best pleased that the village foot-idiot had sullied the nice, clean socks of one of her fellow mistresses, but nevertheless found his predicament amusing:

‘Ha! Ha! You a fool! You a woman foot-fool! Why you not lick clean lips before touch miss Tiffany white socks with mouth? You deserve punishment! You deserve whip!’

The village foot-idiot was momentarily relieved that it had not been mistress Wei-Yan’s white socks that he had sullied with his footslave lips – as she, evidently, would have had him whipped as well as placing him in the stocks!

He quickly remembered, however, that mistress Wei-Yan never seemed to wear white socks – always black socks, with the same, pretty, wedge-heeled, black leather, slip-on shoes beneath the same black, boot-cut trousers. He could not recall ever seeing her wearing any other style of attire or footwear.

But he quite liked that in a young woman – consistency.

Miss Wei-Yan continued with her diatribe:

‘Ha! Ha! Weather-girl say we get heavy rain today! You get wet in stocks while Wei-Yan stay dry inside college! Ha! Ha! You maybe catch cold or freeze to death in stocks! Ha! Ha! Wei-Yan not care. Wei-Yan not care if you die. You just a slave. Ha! Ha! We get new village slave if you die! You cheap. You just a nothing! Ha! Ha!...’

The village foot-idiot recognised the truth in what mistress Wei-Yan was saying. Village foot-idiots were indeed two a penny in the slave auction in the nearby town. Licking female shoe-dirt off pavements wasn’t exactly regarded as skilled labour although, as we have seen, kissing white, feminine socks without sullying them is something of an acquired skill!

‘…You kiss Wei-Yan sock. Kiss top of black sock...you clean lips first…not dirty Wei-Yan socks with mouth! Ha! Ha!’, and with that mistress Wei-Yan, the trainee pharmacist from Hong Kong, imperiously extended her right foot onto the worn-down grass directly below the kneeling and confined village footslave’s mouth, and hitched up the flapping hem of her right, boot-cut trouser leg to reveal yet more of her plain, black ankle sock.

And so that which was cheap and nothing – the village foot-idiot – licked clean its dirty lips and kissed that which was superior and precious – the creased, black ankle sock of a superior, young Chinese woman – whilst the wearer of the latter laughed at and mocked the former:

‘Ha! Ha! Wei-Yan like feel slave lips on sock. Ha! Ha! You Wei-Yan sock-kisser! Wei-Yan better than you! You – loser; Wei-Yan – winner. Ha! Ha! You a Chinese-girl sock slave!’

For his part, the village foot-idiot was enjoying the feel of the soft, creased, black cotton of miss Wei-Yan’s sock on his now clean lips, and a sudden gust of wind that blew the side of mistress Tiffany’s dirty, white sock against the side of his left cheek reminded him that he was, indeed, nothing more than a young women’s sockslave, surrounded by their dirty, warm socks.

Pathetically, he had no aspirations to be anything else.

Miss Wei-Yan, on the other hand, had noble aspirations to be a qualified pharmacist, and so, once her socks had been kissed to her satisfaction, she headed over to the bus-shelter to catch the same bus to her university that would take mistress Tiffany into town. The two girls, like all the young women who lived in the village, were good friends, and soon were discussing the village foot-idiot’s sock-kissing abilities, or lack of them, as they waited for the bus to arrive.

In the meantime, however, it had, indeed, started to rain – washing mistress Tiffany’s dirty white socks as they flapped in the breeze against the village-foot idiot’s kneeling and confined-in-wood face. He was, of course, like all slaves, naked but for a pair of white slave-shorts (and the girl’s socks attached to his ears), and so as the rain got heavier he did indeed start to shiver and feel the cold, just as miss Wei-Yan had so expertly predicted!

Through the rain he heard the bus leave, and thought on how mistress Wei-Yan – seated comfortably in the bus beside her black friend, miss Tiffany, her black-socked, Chinese feet resting comfortably on the floor of the bus inside her black leather, wedge-heeled, slip-on shoes – would not be supplying him with any pharmaceutical remedies for his shivers or his cold, as she had already made it clear to him that she didn’t care about his well-being, even though she would be dedicating her life to the well-being of others.

That was because, as she had so rightly pointed out, he was just a cheap, down in the dirt, public footslave – and not a very good one at that!

Nor, needless to say, could he expect much sympathy from mistress Tiffany – seated beside her Chinese friend on the bus in her shiny, black stilettos and black and brown, stripy ankle socks – who, after all, wanted it to rain as she needed her hastily discarded, dirty, white socks to be washed!

It was approaching mid-morning, and still raining, when his next female tormentress approached him in the stocks. Appropriately enough for such appalling weather conditions, she was wearing green, rubber wellington boots, with fetching white drawstrings at the tops just below the knees, causing the tops of her boots to hug tightly to the blue denim jeans that were tucked into them.

This, he knew, was mistress Fiona – 30 year old wife of one of the local farmers, and a young woman not afraid of a bit of harmless wind and rain! In any case, she was carrying an umbrella to protect her blonde, curly hair from the precipitation.

She too laughed out loud when she saw the now damp, white ankle socks hanging from the tops of the village foot-idiot’s ears, but, unlike her Chinese predecessor, she took the time to read the now sodden cardboard sign detailing his crime and punishment, even though the rain had caused the ink to run:

‘Ha! Ha! “Smearing mud on mistress Tiffany’s white socks with your dirty, slave lips!” she quoted mockingly from the sign. ‘What a fool! What were you thinking of? Were you so keen to kiss your mistress’s socks that you couldn’t even stop to clean your lips before touching them with your mouth, slave? Ha! Ha!’

The village-idiot, who despite the cold and the rain was once again crimson with embarrassment, yet again had to apologise for his ineptitude and his crime to a superior woman:

‘Oh pray, mistress Fiona…if it pleases you, mistress Fiona, this slave is truly sorry for the affront he has caused to the mistress Tiffany’s socks, and begs the mistress Fiona’s forgiveness, if it so pleases you, most sweet and kind mistress Fiona.’

Mistress Fiona just laughed under her umbrella:

‘Forgiveness!? Forgiveness?! Ha! Ha! Why would any woman feel like forgiving you for such a crime? Do you think I would be inclined to forgive you if you dirtied my socks with your ugly, slave lips?’

The mere mention of mistress Fiona’s socks got the village foot-idiot’s meandering mind thinking. He wondered whether mistress Fiona was wearing any socks inside her green, rubber wellington boots? She seemed to be implying that she was – but, if so, they must be calf or ankle-length rather than knee-length, for there were no tell-tale signs of the elasticated tops of a pretty pair of feminine kneesocks peeking over the tops of her stylish, green rubber wellington boots.

He would have dearly loved to untie the white drawstrings at the tops of mistress Fiona’s green, wellington boots with his slave teeth and respectfully pull them off her shapely, jean-covered legs just in order to see what style and colour of socks she was wearing inside them - if any!

But, of course, in this weather, that was never going to happen! Instead, perhaps inevitably, he was ordered to lick the rain off mistress Fiona’s wet, muddy and grass-stained green, wellington boots – to taste her boot-rubber, hopefully without spreading her boot-muck all over her boots, but rather taking it onto his slave tongue and swallowing it so that his empty stomach would at least be filled with something useful that day.

His neck muscles strained and ached as he reached his confined head as high up as it would go in order to try to lick the very tops of mistress Fiona’s green, rubber, knee-length wellington boots. She even gave him instructions to suck clean the rain-splattered, white drawstrings at the tops of her boots.

Although it caused him pain, he was happy to strain his neck forward in this way, as it meant the umbrella protecting mistress Fiona’s curly, blonde locks was also, temporarily at least, protecting his slave head from the rain.

By the same token, however, it meant the umbrella was ‘protecting’ mistress Tiffany’s white socks, which were still hanging from his ears, from the rain, and he knew that just wouldn’t do. His selfish desire to keep dry was of much less importance than the need to wash the offending dirt from his mouth out of miss Tiffany’s nice, white ankle socks, and so he was actually quite relieved when the young farmer’s-wife, mistress Fiona, walked away from the stocks – her green, wellington boots now glistening with his slave saliva as well as with rainwater.

The hale and hearty mistress Fiona was, in actual fact, the only lady who deigned to visit him during the prolonged and heavy autumnal shower, and it wasn’t until the sun came out again that some other village women began to approach him in the stocks situated on the village green. In fact, almost as soon as the rain stopped, the village became a veritable hive of activity – inasmuch as this sleepy, one-street village could ever be described as a ‘hive’ of activity.

The village foot-idiot could gradually feel himself drying out in the stocks as the sun got to work on him. And, of course, on mistress Tiffany’s freshly rain-washed, white ankle socks on the side of his face. He only wished he could see them properly in order to ascertain whether or not the rain had successfully washed his lip-dirt out of them. He hoped it had, for he now felt truly ashamed and embarrassed at what he had done.

It was lunchtime. Not the village foot-idiot’s lunchtime – you understand. For him, there would be no lunchtime, or dinner time, or supper time – for he had been sentenced by mistress Tiffany to 18 long hours in the village stocks!

But it was certainly lunchtime for her friend, the 22 year old postmistress, mistress Clare. And it was now the familiar pink and white trainers of mistress Clare who stood before the kneeling slave confined in the stocks on the village green, for she had decided to eat her packed lunch in front of the slave.

Or rather, on top of him, as she placed a small blanket on top of the still-a-little-bit-wet, wooden crossbar of the stocks and sat down on it, wrapping her black and white tracksuit bottoms around the slave’s face as she tucked her sneakered feet in below his chin.

The village foot-idiot immediately identified a number of ironic coincidences in the situation:

Firstly, mistress Clare’s black and white tracksuit bottoms, which were now wrapped around his kneeling face, were also embracing the very same white ankle socks which her friend, mistress Tiffany, believed had been sullied, albeit indirectly, by the mud from the soles of those selfsame pink and white trainers which now dangled in the air beneath the village footslave’s chin.

Secondly, because her black and white tracksuit bottoms were revealingly unzipped at the ankles, the village foot-idiot could clearly see that miss Clare was also wearing white ankle socks on her pretty, white feet – white socks very similar to those of mistress Tiffany which he had earlier sullied, with an almost identical flowery pattern in the soft, white stitching. The only obvious difference was that miss Clare’s white ankle socks each had two fetching pink stripes at the tops, whereas mistress Tiffany’s socks were plain white.

And thirdly, mistress Clare was, presumably, blissfully unaware of the two aforementioned coincidences!

But then, why should she be? Why should she care if the pattern in the stitching of her white socks matched that of her friend Tiffany’s socks? Why should she even care if it was her shoe mud that had ended up dirtying her friend’s socks via the medium of the inept foot-idiot’s dirty slave lips? Was any of that her concern?

Hardly!

Mistress Clare was a nice girl who often visited the village slave during her lunch hour whenever he was confined in the stocks for some misdemeanour or other. She liked to keep him company – and to add to his hunger pangs by letting him smell her sandwich as she ate it.

However, she was also, it has to be said, not the brightest bulb in the socket! Unlike her friend Tiffany, who was a solicitor’s clerk in the town centre, or her other friend Wei-Yan, who was a pharmaceutical student, miss Clare had left school with virtually no academic qualifications, and had worked ever since as an assistant in the village post-office located inside the village shop.

Although she was actually just the postmistress’s assistant, the stupid, village foot-idiot was under the impression that mistress Clare was the village ‘postmistress’ herself. Miss Clare’s ability in conning the village foot-idiot into thinking that she actually ran the post office, however, at least demonstrated her intellectual superiority over the stupid, male slave.

Mistress Clare spoke with her mouth full of delicious, fresh chicken sandwich as she spoke down at the stupid slave kneeling in the wooden stocks beneath her:

‘Ha! Ha! How are you liking it slave? How are you liking being locked in the stocks with my friend Tiffany’s dirty, white socks hanging from your ears?’

The pathetic foot-idiot could only, of course, give the intellectually superior miss Clare one reply in such circumstances:

‘Oh pray, mistress Clare, if it pleases you mistress Clare, this slave deserves all he gets, mistress Clare, for he is truly an incompetent footslave!’

Miss Clare laughed in agreement. It was nice to be able to ‘lord’ it over (or should that be ‘lady’ it over) someone who was even more thick and incompetent than she was:

‘Ha! Ha! …Look at my white socks, slave. Can you see the creases in them, and the pink stripes at the top?’

The village foot-idiot, at that precise moment in time, could see virtually nothing else, for mistress Clare’s socked and sneakered feet enveloped the front of his face just as her friend Tiffany’s damp, wet socks enveloped the sides of his cheeks:

‘Yes mistress Clare. I can see them, mistress Clare, if it pleases you mistress Clare.’

‘Would you like to kiss my pink and white socks while I’m eating my sandwich, slave?’ miss Clare asked him gaily, sucking some mayonnaise off her little finger.

The village idiot, kneeling humbly in the stocks, and obsessed by young women’s socks as he was, responded positively. Not that he had the option of responding in any other manner:

‘Oh yes, mistress Clare…oh pray, mistress Clare…this slave would indeed be honoured to kiss the mistress’s pink and white socks, if it so pleases you superior mistress Clare!’

Miss Clare seemed to ponder his request for a moment as she washed down another bite of her chicken sandwich with some freshly squeezed orange juice:

‘Erm…Nah…I don’t want to risk it slave! You might dirty my socks like you dirtied my friend Tiffany’s. You can lick the dirt off my trainers instead!’

Oh irony of ironies! Lest he dirty mistress Clare’s white socks, he is permitted only to lick clean her muddy, wet, pink and white sneakers – the same sneakers whose mud he had inadvertently spread with his mouth onto her friend Tiffany’s white socks in the first place!

Or, at least, that was what mistress Tiffany had believed. He would now get the chance to find out for sure whether mistress Clare’s trainer-mud was the same mud he had been licking off the pavement prior to so disastrously kissing mistress Tiffany’s white socks – for he now had a specific order from mistress Clare herself to lick the mud directly off her trainers!

Miss Clare, sweet and kind young woman that she was, helpfully turned over her right, sneakered foot on its side as it dangled below the confined footslave’s chin, thereby affording his slave tongue access to the thick, beige-coloured, rubber treads on the sole of her familiar pink and white sneaker.

He licked the mud.

Definitely the same mud he had been licking off the pavement earlier that morning! Mistress Tiffany had been right. Mistress Tiffany was always right!

Mistress Clare, meanwhile, was speaking to her friend Tiffany on her mobile phone as the village foot-idiot licked the mud out of the treads of both her pink and white sneakers – laughing and explaining to her friend that she was humiliating him with her sneakered feet as he was secured in the stocks with her friend’s dirty white socks still attached to the sides of his ears.

Oh the sweet irony of it all!

Later that evening, when she returned home from her work in the solicitor’s office in the town, mistress Tiffany went back over to the stocks to see how her white ankle socks were doing. She opined that they still weren’t sufficiently clean of her friend Clare’s sneaker mud, and accordingly, as she had earlier promised to do, she unclipped the socks from the village foot-idiot’s ears, and stuffed them both into his mouth, ensuring that his outer lips were still free of sock, lest other women may wish him to kiss their boots, shoes or socks during his remaining 8 hours or so confined helplessly in the village stocks.

Stuck in the stocks, sucking on socks. Such is the fate of the village foot-idiot, truly a laughing stock if ever there was one!

The End